Sunny with a chance of earthquakes

Woh, big surprise, she’s talking about the earthquake…

So, unless you’ve been living where the newspaper service and i-n-t-e-r-n-e-t don’t go, Christchurch (that’s Christchurch - New Zealand, not Christchurch - England) was struck by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. Scientifically speaking that’s between a 7.0 and 7.2. (Wah, I can count up in decimals!) I WAS in Christchurch when it happened, but by some unknown celestial power (i.e. cheap seats on GrabASeat.co.nz) I have made in back to Wellington just in time for the start of uni. Rejoice!

The following is my story. ‘24’ style. Sorta.

Please note that in the next few decades I shall strive to tweak the blahness bit by bit so that I’ll have a really cool awesome story to tell my grandchildren.

4.37am - I was sleeping. Zzzzzzhhh. I was dreaming about Inception again (gosh, I can’t get it out of my head!), and about floating up on some shore. I could sense the waves splashing back and forth. Suddenly, I opened my eyes are realised that it’s actually the light from the lamp in my room that’s swaying back and forth. Mum is standing by the switch going “ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING?? IT’S AN EARTHQUAKE!! GET UP!!” I can’t even remember the first thing that popped into my head. All I remembered was grabbing my backpack and stuffing in my camera (because video evidence if I die *touch wood* would be key in preserving my memory), my cellphone (in case I need to contact the army), all these important documents like my passport Mum was chucking at me, and a tissue box (I don’t know why I did that. It filled up half my backpack. Maybe I thought I was going to cry >.<)

The earthquake itself wasn’t the scariest bit. The worst bit was the 3 of us standing in the dark while Mum frantically made sure we had all the important stuff and whispering (I don’t know why) to get spare batteries. Oh, and also not knowing when the aftershocks were going to come. Or how intense they were going to be. That was a tear-jerker. No pun intended.

4.45am - Our neighbour Steve comes to make sure we’re ok and yells at us for still being inside the house. (I even managed to get changed out of my pjs and into slacks… tsk tsk XD) We all then congregated in his family’s backyard. Oh yes, and I’m carrying my dog Cotton all this time. After the aftershocks stopped being so… shocking… we went back inside because it was too cold to keep standing outside (but we still had to run outside like crazy mad people a few times because the aftershocks got too… jiggly). Oh, and also, I would like to take this oppotunity to offer my graciasness to all jellyfish family who txted me v promptly. Love <3!

(insert picture)

Romantic setting with the neighbours =.=

See the frog? It was the only portable radio we could find. Steve took it from the shower.

(insert picture)

Wendy was like, “I can’t believe we’re all crouched over the dining table listening to a frog.”

So yes, we just sat and sat for a few hours. At about 7.30am we went back to our place, cleaned up all the stuff that fell over during the big shake-up, noticed the cracks all along our walls, and then I went to bed for about 3 hours. I woke up at about 11am to the smell of lunch, and Mum had pretty much whipped up a whole feast with about 3 days worth of food. I was like, “If there is a curfew and we’re on lockdown for a week, shouldn’t we be thinking of rationing our food”.

OH, I just thought of a joke -

Barman: “How would you like your martini Mr. Bond?”

James Bond: “Christchurch, not stirred.”

Laugh, dammit!

Aaaaanyway, you can check out some of the disastrous earthquake pics on Google (Tumblr isn’t very Upload-A-Picture friendly). If you type in ‘Christchurch’ into the Goggle searchbar the first search prompter that comes up is ‘Christchurch Earthquake’. Atlantic Plate represent!

The sad thing is that on the same day, although there were 0 fatalities from the earthquake (Thank you, heavenly spirits!) 9 people died in the Fox Glacier plane crash. Unfortunately, that incident kinda got totally overshadowed by the earthquake. You can read about that tragedy here:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-newspapers/west-coast-6013/4096456/Nine-people-killed-in-Fox-Glacier-plane-crash
Our condolences go out to family and friends who have lost loved ones.

Dear Christchurch,

I hope you are ok! Please take care of my friends and family :)

Regards,

FFANF.

P.s. Also, one last ‘did-you-know?’. A family friends who lives in Merivale told us that the supermarkets ran out of mineral water after the quake, and there was a massive line at Mcd’s with people clamouring for food. Gotta get your Mcnuggets fix, I guess.

P.p.s. Also, my flatmte is real worried that an earthquake is going to strike Wellington next (Been reading too many news articles… probably means I should actually pick up a newspaper at some point. Gosh, I’m so ignorant). Top priority: Buy a carton of water and keep it in the pantry!

P.p.p.s. Also, I heard Denny and Tiffany went back to sleep after the initial shock happened? WTH?!